.'

   'What bastards they are!' shouted Alexei Turbin. 'Couldn't they at least have given you some felt boots and a sheepskin jerkin?'

   'Felt boo-oots', Myshlaevsky mimicked him, weeping. 'Felt boo . . .'

   Unbearable pain gripped his hands and feet in the warmth. Hearing Elena's footsteps go into the kitchen, Myshlaevsky screamed, in tears, screamed furiously:

   'It was a shambles!'

   Croaking and writhing in pain he collapsed and pointing at his socks, groaned:

   'Take them off, take them off . . .'

   There was a sickening smell of methylated spirits as frozen extremities thawed out; from a single small wineglass of vodka Lieutenant Myshlaevsky became intoxicated in a moment, his eyes clouding.

   'Oh Lord, don't say they'll have to be amputated . . .'he said bitterly, rocking back and forth in his chair.

   'Nonsense, of course not. You'll be all right . . . Yes. The big toe's frostbitten. There . . . The pain will go.'

   Nikolka squatted down and began to pull on some clean black socks while Myshlaevsky's stiff, wooden hands inched into the sleeves of a towelling bathrobe. Crimson patches began to appear on his cheeks and Lieutenant Myshlaevsky, grimacing in clean underwear and bathrobe, loosened up and came back to life. A stream of foul abuse rattled around the room like hail on a window-sill. Squinting with rage, he poured a stream of obscenities on the headquarters staff in their first-class railroad cars, on a certain Colonel Shchetkin, the cold, Petlyura, the Germans and the snowstorm and ended by heaping the most vulgar abuse on the Hetman of All the Ukraine himself.

   Alexei and Nikolka watched the lieutenant's teeth chatter as he thawed out, making occasional sympathetic noises.

   'The Hetman? Mother-fucker!' Myshlaevsky snarled. 'Where were the Horse Guards, eh? Back in the palace! And we were sent out in what we stood up in . . . Days on end in the snow and frost . . . Christ! I thought we were all done for . .